Lost Cat Travels 1,800 Miles from Colorado to New York

She might have just wanted to get out of the house and see the big city, but after five years away from home, a 6-year-old cat named Willow is making her way back from New York to Colorado.

She ran out of her Colorado home while the property was being renovated and found herself in New York City, some 1,800 miles away. A good Samaritan found her on Manhattan's east side and brought her to the Animal Care & Control shelter in New York, where a scan of her microchip found that she wasn't from anywhere near the Big Apple.

"No one knows how the cat made her way from Colorado to New York City, but we are happy she is safe and will soon be back with her owners," AC&C's executive director Julie Bank said in a release. "This miracle story underscores the importance of having some sort of identification on your pet and the effectiveness of a microchip."

For their part, Willow's owners thought that she had been eaten by coyotes, but now that she's on her way back home, they're glad Willow was microchipped. "All our pets are microchipped," Jamie Squires told the AP. "If I could microchip my kids, I would."